In the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) NFV architecture, an orchestrator typically has access to data repositories including a network services catalog, a virtualized network function (VNF) catalog, a NFV Instances repository, and a NFV infrastructure (NFVI) resources repository.
The network services catalog is a repository of all the on-boarded network services. It includes a network services descriptor (NSD), a virtual link descriptor (VLD) and a VNF forwarding graph descriptor (VNFFGD). The VLD describes resource requirements that are needed for a link between VNFs, physical network functions (PNF) and endpoints. The VNFFGD includes a network forwarding path (NFP) element that includes an ordered list of connection points along with rules/policies associated to the list.
The VNF catalog is a repository of all the on-boarded VNF packages, and includes a VNF descriptor (VNFD) and software images. The VNFD describes a VNF in terms of its deployment and operational behavior, and is used by a virtual network function manager (VNFM) to instantiate the VNF and for lifecycle management of the VNF.
The NFV instances repository holds information of all VNF instances and network service (NS) instances. Each VNF instance is represented by a VNF record, and each NS instance is represented by an NS record.
The NFVI resources repository holds information about the available/reserved/allocated NFVI resources as abstracted by a virtual infrastructure manager (VIM) across an operator's infrastructure domains, and is used for resource reservation, allocation and monitoring.